Selectboard - Regular Meeting

All right, I'd like to call this meeting to order. Please hold your comments until I open the agenda items for public comment. When addressing the board, state your full name, both in person and on Zoom. It is suggested that you enter your full name as your ID on Zoom. I will take a motion to go into executive session.

So moved. Second.

All in favor? Wendy moved. Wendy moved and David seconded. Right. Here we are.

You lost two of them.

I have an idea. I know where they are.

it's that wasn't mine hmm

All right. I'll take a motion to approve the minutes of July 6, 2026. So moved. Second. All in favor? Appointments and resignations, transition of Nancy Parsons from probationary to full-time status as of July 8, 2026.

Move appointment. Second.

Thank you very much. All in favor? Consent agenda confirmed Colton Devoe as a full time patrol officer effective July 20, 2026.

Confirmation move.

2nd, yeah.

2nd, all in favor. Select board reports anybody have anything to report.

I've been getting a lot of comments about the. the dumpsters at the town garage. A lot of concern. There are people in the town who, because of the narrow lane leading down to their houses, the trucks can't get in. So they rely on those dumpsters to get rid of their trash. Now, one could suggest that they put their own little dumpster at the head of their driveway. But some of these driveways are very long and have a lot of houses on them to be a big dumpster there. So I think we need to discuss further what we can do to keep our residents happy and provide a safe place. at the town garage. I understand the concerns, but I think by closing it all together, we're going to have a problem on our hands. So I think it needs more discussion.

Yeah, I was under the impression that when Brian brought this forward, it was the first of many conversations. And one of the points we made was communication is going to be a key. Well, we're starting to communicate, and now the communication is coming back to us. So the residents' input should shape where we come down. And I guess I need to learn more about these long private ways that people aren't able to get their trash picked up. I mean, that's news to me. That's learning.

you know there are a number of private driveways private ways around town where the trash truck is not able to go down yeah in a private way there are a few different options for them for the removal of their trash so there are lots of the wooden bins yes people put out at the end of their roads and you can put two one option because the bin is there and our trucks can go by on the most adjacent road and can pick up from those right setting in place a small dumpster for their own use places that are private roads around town do have such configurations that's that's not uncommon but there is a private dumpster for the on a private road. So a dumpster is an option as well. And then the transportation themselves to EMR, which is open 8 to 4 Monday through Friday, 8 to 3 on Saturday, it's in their vehicles already. It's a matter of going around to a different location to drop it off. I would encourage that if anyone has someone that comes up to them that wants to discuss their particular circumstances, by all means, send them my way. I do definitely want to hear from people about what their particular conditions are. There was one that I received that they're really only here weekends during the off season. They'll be here seasonally during the summer, but only weekends in the off season. So putting a trash can at the end of the road on Sunday when they go, but a bin may be the answer there too, right? So then their trash cans are contained. And so I'll try to work with individuals in their particular circumstances to come up with, while continuing to try and constrain use at that site and potentially shut that down to traffic. Because there's a variety of reasons to shut it down. It is a safety issue on top of the fact that we have a lot of abuse in that area. There's vehicles immediately parked behind town vehicles that are trying to do their job backing up there's a fair amount of trash that comes through there that really isn't from town yeah yeah i agree with you i'd say yeah i know it's a problem with the taxpayers either yeah um so i i do want to hear as much as i can and i will look at every particular circumstance of everybody that wants to come and talk to me just please by all means send them my way happy to my phone's driveway is 1100 feet long i don't know how long and my father just

Put some garbage at the end of the road, you know, on the main highway. And I can understand that if, you know, somebody not being here on trash pickup day. But, you know, for a lot of the others, they could do the same thing. Put the garbage out. I mean, if they would drive over to Sargent Drive, drive just the end of the road, put the garbage can there and then pick it up.

That is the policy that we have, is if you can bring it out. If we can't get down that private road for whatever reason, the truck is just not capable of getting down there. Some we do seasonally, some we just don't do at all. For those that were either not going there seasonally or not going there at all, if it's brought to the next road, next available road, we will pick it up. That is a practice that we've had for a long time. So just bringing it out the private road, setting it onto the public road right on the corner, can is sitting there, the guys will grab it. It's no problem. If it's an issue of maintaining those cans so that they don't blow away, so that the crows don't get on them, maybe a bin is the appropriate solution. It could potentially resolve a lot of these issues that way. If it's a bunch of homes, maybe a dumpster is the way to go. we can pick up an awful lot of stuff en route versus having to pick up mounds and mounds and heaps of trash on a daily basis, multiple times a day. It's a dumping ground.

Are there cameras at the town garage?

There are, and we've been exploring upgrading those cameras to be able to do a little bit more in terms of enforcement. So it will spend a little bit on some cameras and train them so that we can see a little bit more of what's going on. We've done some kind of loose counting of vehicles. This is in quite a ways in the past, just in terms of trying to figure out whether or not there's in town versus out of town. And there's an awful lot coming from elsewhere.

The reason I ask is because I have visions if you, like on the weekend, block the driveway off, I can see people, oh, I can't get in, I'll drop them right there, right at the gate.

Yes, and if we end up going down that road and it is blocked off, that's going to have to be monitored, it'll have to be enforcement, and it'll have to be

i i see that at the at the seal harbor town dock you've got guys from on the hill that have like paid to take leaves or something to southwest and they don't they throw it in the dumpster you wouldn't well you probably have seen there was a refrigerator down there one time the other day there was a big great big tv you know it was they just put it beside the dumpster you know and those cameras are great for that

Yeah, I think we talked, we caught one guy that left the mattress. That was our one victory. We paid for cameras all over that campus. And then five years later, we had to hear about how we needed more HD cameras. And as far as I know, they didn't have any trouble reading license plates. I think the problem is enforcement and cutting the manpower loose to actually track these people down. You know, it's the E word, no one likes it, but you got to have it.

So, obviously, we'll have to continue the discussion on this. One thing, unless either of you two wanted to mention it, the trip we did last week might be a good thing to mention. Let me just chime in on it. Just for the sake of everyone, A group from the town, including David and John and myself, went to Hamden to Waste Hub to do a tour of the facility to see if, you know, is this real? Is this actually happening? And it was a mixed success in that we definitely Saw it. Saw the trucks everywhere. Have a whole new appreciation for the word juice. Saw everything. Unfortunately, the conveyor belt did get jammed just as we showed up. But I'll mention this. In terms of the apparatus, in terms of the machinery, it's quite impressive. And it's quite obviously running because there's no other way it would be that grimy and dirty and kind of really kind of horrible smelling any other way. If it was all shiny and gleaming and new, I think I'd be very suspicious, but that's not what we saw. We saw something very much in use that was just having a bit of a trouble. John and I plan to go back up so that we can actually say to the public, we have seen the conveyor belts running, but we have seen everything but that at that point in time. And there are at least a few members, I think, who would just as soon not ever set foot in there ever again. And that's understandable. But I just wanted to give everyone that heads up that we did make the field trip up there. It was just some unfortunate timing about the belts getting jammed. And a few of those items, such as the shredder that's the size of a car, was quite impressive. So that was just my thoughts. I wanted to make sure we got that out to everyone.

Was it jammed because of something that was put in that shouldn't have been put in?

really yeah or something that the shredders failed to shred all the way yeah again there's only so much we can see other than people with forks trying to yeah interestingly enough there was a barbecue grill located inside the fat this whole operation and the question is do they eat lunch in there well like a or was that a piece of salad yeah or was that a piece of salvage i don't know

Well, it's all related because one of the reasons that questions of Sargent Driver coming up is because we've shut down our recycling bins. So I'm glad you tacked on that report because this leads to this leads to this, and we're going to be getting an earful from the public, which is not a surprise because both are pretty big changes. One has happened, one we're thinking about. So let's try to look at the trash issue holistically.

I heard from one person actually today that said, well, you know, it's too bad, but I can understand why they want to shut it down. You know, we're going to miss it, but he could understand. He knew. He could understand. It's a mess.

Okay.

Anyway, are we able to want to talk about this point? Anything else? A unfinished business review and approve contract with Clark Construction for the installation of a stormwater catch basin on a time and materials basis with funds coming from Public Works Road Reserve account 4050100-245.73 with an approximate unencumbered balance of $336,930.45. Apologize for not being able to be here last time around for this.

the location for this stormwater basin has a little bit of complicating factors with it when doing the installation of this particular piece of it which is that there are water lines and electrical lines that are very relatively close to here and so the original estimate that we got was pretty conservative and i didn't feel that the original quote really captured what was going to be here i'm less concerned about those in road utilities than what the contractor, I think, was. And so I requested from the contractor to get time and materials versus a quote. I didn't want the town to be on the hook for the full amount of the quote that was given to us when I thought it was going to come in cheaper. So that's why I asked for the time and materials. And I didn't have enough materials backing up what I was proposing as the time and materials, which I've now provided. You can see the various rates for this time and materials contract. I did take a look at those rates relative to other MDOT rates. So we pulled together several time and materials contracts from MDOT. And it's a little bit of a mixed bag, but for the most part, these are completely within line of MDOT rates that we're seeing from other time and materials contracts that have been done. So I'm confident in those numbers that we have there. One that stood out initially to me was the flagging, which seemed like an awfully high price. We call the flagging company. That's just what it is. But it's what it costs to put a flagger on the street. So it's completely within normal industry standards. And this is potentially going to save us a bit of money relative to the quote, I think. We'll have someone on site that's managing this as well, so the engineer that's done this design. We'll be doing construction observation. So we'll know what those times and materials are relative to this project.

OK. So the only thing missing from that information is the hourly multiplier. Hourly multiplier. I mean, we had it. Yeah. So we can't really compare. You see what I'm saying? I had a net figure originally, and it's hard to compare these numbers with that until we know roughly what they think the time required is going to be.

Well, I got the estimate of time within quotes. than what was anticipated by the contractor. And why I think this is going to be a cheaper way to go. If we ultimately end up at that same amount, if the contractor's right and I'm not, then we're at that quote level. But I don't think it'll take as much time as what was anticipated by the contractor. And that was what was driving that quote to be as high as it is. The rates were all the same.

So I just think it'll take as much time. You see what I'm saying? I mean, the material I have in here, I can't compare that with a set figure of whatever was $90,000. It's hard to...

And in essence, that's what we're doing is we're going away from that toward just going on an hourly basis because we think we can do better that way, which makes it tough to do a comparison because we're going apples and oranges. That's the key part here. Thank you.

And we've been over, over see, it's not going to be somebody from town or engineering.

There's been doing the design on the work and they've been on site for a lot of the other construction that's there and they've been working with this contractor. And so they understand what the project is. They understand the design of it, what needs to be done, what needs to be accomplished.

My question last time was what will keep them from saying, hey, we got a free open pocketbook. We can put as much time or whatever we want.

Well, our engineer on site is the one that's going to be. But it's, you know, with the time and materials contract, if they don't put that material in the ground or they don't spend that time, then the engineer comes back to us and says they did not.

And they'll have to resubmit. You don't think you would pay to have somebody that has their own interest or they do?

We're paying the engineer for it, to be honest. That is, they are there serving our interests. Yeah. Yeah. Okay.

Is this typical to do time and materials versus an actual estimate?

Or do you just- I haven't done one before.

Okay.

But it's not out of the It happens. So we had some DOT ones that we could pull together. So DOT does it time and materials on some cases as well. I don't know what their criteria are for where they go with time and materials relative to others. But in this case, this to me made the most sense to just simply pay for only what we ultimately end up doing on site at the rates that we know in advance and materials costs. you share what the town spent on the design work for our portion of it ballpark that again was a 60 40 60 40 yeah lit yep with the landowner covering 60 so the town covered 40 i could look back invoices but i don't remember off the top of my head i just mean census scale i don't mean ten thousand dollars thank you that's all that's all i needed to know

how is it the property owner and why wasn't it a 50 50 rather than that's what he offered oh really motivated yeah yeah okay good um do we have a motion yeah i'll make a motion for approval i'll second it good any further comments all in favor bye

Okay, new business consideration of a request to waive the rental fee to Seal Harbor Village Improvement Society to utilize the Seal Harbor Fire Station community.

Move approval. Second.

All in favor? Consider releasing up to $32,000 in the fire equipment engine reserve account 4040300-24471 and authorize the fire chief to use such funds for the purpose of purchasing structural firefighting gear.

I'll move approval.

Second.

Second.

All in favor? Consider releasing $9,291.91 from the fire equipment engine reserve account, 4040300-24471, and authorize the fire chief to use such funds for repairs to the fire department's 2012 Ferrara fire truck. Move approval. Second. Any discussion? All in favor?

i asked a question about one before that i know it's already approved i watched you missed your chance yeah you weren't quite quick enough well yeah all right yes you may oh yeah i'm just i'm just curious mike is that something that something new or a replacement new gear or something new you're doing it's uh

Four sets are for new hire, and one set is for an on-call firefighter that is geared. It's just worn out.

Yeah, so you have that gear anyway. You just have to replace it.

Yeah, we have gear, but what we run into is when we have new hires. Yeah, right. Sometimes it either doesn't fit or the gear that's existing is not compliant because it's gone.

Yeah, okay, good. I figured that. I was just kind of curious. Thank you. She asked it is.

Okay, informational review of investment activity for fiscal year 26 for town amount. Is there an investment policy?

So you will see in your packet that you have two sheets as opposed to last year. You had one nice page summary. Unfortunately, first national decided at the end of May to change their computer system. Why they didn't wait until June when fiscal year ended? but that's why you have the two sheets, one for most of the year and the other for the single month of June. In summary, the increase in the balance was approximately $500,000 that we made over the course of the year. That's the dividends, interest, and the fees taken out of that. The large deduction, is the reserve accounts paying back the general fund. When we kind of check for all the things that you approved for various meetings, we pay those out of the general operating fund. And at the end of the year, when funds get really low in our checking account, for cashflow purposes, we move that balance out of these reserved accounts and back into the operating. And this is done pretty consistently through the years. Last year was a little later being done, but we needed the cash flow and it only made sense to do that instead of borrowing any money.

That was the 2.4 million?

It was, sir. Yes. And there's a detailed list of what makes up that transfer.

Okay. Thank you.

Excellent. Thank you. Any questions? All right, public comment periods. Anybody online want to make a comment? All right, then I guess we'll move on to the Treasurer's Warrants. Approval and signature town invoice AP-2705 DD-2703. Remount of $796,185.30. Move approval and signature. Second. All in favor? Approval and signature state fees and payroll benefits AP2702, DD2702, AP2704, town payroll PR2702 and PR2703 for a total of $307,428.40. Signature? Second. All in favor? One abstention, please. Acknowledgements, Treasurer's Town voided disbursements and school board AP payroll. School invoices, MDES AP01. School payroll, MDES PRO2. Voided disbursements, V2701 for a net total of $303,551.27. Move acknowledgement. All in favor? I will take a motion to adjourn. So moved. Second. All available. Thank you.